Chris Wikoff discusses his career in treasury, emphasizing how building partnerships and expanding responsibilities led to a major transformation effort at a global technology company. He covers team development, managing complexity, and upgrading banking and treasury systems.
I think over my career I maybe didn't recognize it right away, but certainly over my career I think I grew greater appreciation for bringing some things maybe that came natural with some other important areas like developing partnerships, developing teams, developing relationships. We may have been able to step into some complexity and may have been able to add value in one place or the other. But I think that really started propelling when you build relationships internally, externally, when you build those, those partnerships and you know, create kind of this collaborative energy. And I think all of that contributed to, over a period of time, of continually expanding responsibilities, taking on new things and not being afraid to do that, never being afraid to, to learn to step into a space that maybe is not so familiar, but it's a need and having that eagerness again, not just myself, but those around me to step in to something and explore it, learn it, and how can we make it better. And I think just over time that evolves into expanding responsibilities. And if you're able to do that well, then it can be a great experience to grow the team. People are going to make mistakes. Particularly when you're constantly over time expanding your territory, stepping into new areas, while also trying to support the day to day and to do that well in that environment, you're always learning, you're always looking to get better. And so that means you're going to make mistakes. And to know that it is a partnership and as long as there's, you know, the right ability to learn and to be part of the team and come to the job every day with the right positive attitude, then okay, that's the essentials for success. Not to do it, you know, perfectly all the time. Certainly you want to mitigate mistakes as much as possible, but when you're trying to build a team that is growing and taking on new responsibilities and getting better, you know, there just has to be this understanding that hey, we're going to make some mistakes along the way and we're going to make those mistakes together and learn from it and move on. Coming into the role, there was a lot of what I'll say maturing to do in the treasury function. It was a small team. Casting that vision and kind of broadening the perspective that I mentioned earlier was something that I had to do. Coming into this role is repainting the picture for the team of what corporate treasury could look like and frankly should look like to support a global complex technology company with 2 billion in sales. And so out of a lot of that, what we collectively decided to pursue was a bank transformation effort. Of consolidating banking partners, reducing our bank account footprint around the world to be more efficient, more cost effective, but also to add some complexity where it made sense, like in developing some cross country and multi currency fiscal sweeping and pooling structures in Europe and also plugging in technology, pursuing a Treasury management system.
